About theauthor and the series

About the author

Amy Metz attended Centre College and graduated from the University of Kentucky with a BA in Elementary Education. She taught first grade until her first child was born and then motherhood and volunteer work took up her time. When her mother was diagnosed with dementia in 2009, she turned to writing as therapy. Needing an escape from life and from the memoir, and desperately needing to laugh, she began writing a humorous southern mystery that eventually became Murder & Mayhem in Goose Pimple Junction, and an author was born.

Amy has been richly blessed with two sons – one married and one pursuing his master's degree – and a daughter-in-law. When not actively engaged in writing or spending time with her family, Amy can usually be found with a mixing spoon, camera, or book in her hands. Amy's debut novel, Murder & Mayhem in Goose Pimple Junction, was first published in August 2012, with the second edition released in September 2014. Heroes & Hooligans in Goose Pimple Junction followed in December 2014, and Short & Tall Tales in Goose Pimple Junction was published in 2015. Rogues & Rascals in Goose Pimple Junction launched in May 2016. Amy lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Contact her at: authoramymetz@yahoo.com. Visit Amy's blog at: A Blue Million Books.

Note from Amy:I want to extend a huge thank you to the artists whose works grace the covers of my books. Karen Mathison Schmidt's work is on the front and back covers of Murder & Mayhem In Goose Pimple Junction and depicts Goose Pimple Junction perfectly. Thank you, Karen! To find out more about Karen, and to see more of her work, go to her website.

Thank you to John Charles Gibbs for his "Southern Home," which is on the cover of Heroes & Hooligans in Goose Pimple Junction and is the exact house I have in my head for Martha Maye's house on Marigold Lane. You can find John and his work at his website or at his page on fineartamerica.

Thank you to Anne Rackley for completely capturing the essence of Ezzie for the cover of Short & Tall Tales in Goose Pimple Junction. You can find Anne at her website.

And thank you to "Emerico" Imre Tóth for allowing me to use his awesome "Rain Day—Bowler Hat" painting for book four. The minute I saw the image, I knew it was the right cover for Rogues & Rascals. You can find his work here.

Sample chapters from the Goose Pimple Junction series

Murder & Mayhem in Goose Pimple Junction

Chapter 1We've Howdied But We Ain't Shook Yet

swan: verb \swon\ to swear, deritive of swanneeI swan--raisin’ kids is like bein' pecked to death by a chicken.

May 2010“You are dumber ‘n a soup sandwich, Earl.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you’re a hole in search of a doughnut, Clive.”

Tess Tremaine walked into Slick & Junebug’s Diner, past the two gentlemen arguing at the counter, and slid into one of the red vinyl booths. The old men were arguing good-naturedly, and she imagined they were probably lifelong friends, passing the time of day.

Tess smiled as she looked around the diner. She was happy with her decision to move to this friendly town. Everyone greeted her cheerfully and went out of their way to be nice. It was a pretty place to live, too. Every street in the small town was lined with decades-old trees in front of old, well kept homes full of character, just like the citizens. She was confident she’d made the right choice. This was a good place to heal from her divorce and start a new life.

A raised voice at the counter brought Tess out of her thoughts. One of the old men spoke loud enough for the whole diner to hear.

“If I had a dog as ugly as you, I’d shave his butt and make him walk backwards,” he said, jabbing his index finger at the other man.

A waitress appeared at the table. Tess hadn’t seen a beehive hairdo in person until she saw this waitress. With her pink uniform dress and white apron, she looked like she jumped out of a page from the sixties. Her name tag said “Willa Jean.”

“Don’t mind those two old coots.” Willa Jean hitched her head in their direction. “They’re about as dumb as a box a hair, but they’re gentle souls underneath. Their problem is one of ‘em’s always trying to one-up the other.”

She got her pad and pencil out of her front apron pocket, ready to take Tess's order, but she stopped and cocked her head, staring hard at Tess and smacking her gum.

"Anybody ever tell you, you look like Princess Di? I just loved her, didn’t you?” She bent her head slightly to the side to look at Tess’s legs under the table. "'Cept you look a might shorter 'n Di was. How tall are you?"

"Five-five." Tess couldn’t help smiling at the compliment.

"Yep. What we have here is a mini Diana. And your hair color is a reddish-blond instead of a blonde-blonde like my girl Di. Other 'n that, honey, you could be her clone."

"Thank you. You just earned a big tip." Tess’s smile lit up her face.

The waitress winked at Tess. “What can I gitcha?”

“I think I’ll just have a Coke and a ham sandwich, please.”

“Anything on that? Wanna run it through the garden?”

“Run it through the . . . ” Tess’s brow furrowed.

“Yeah, you know . . . lettuce, tomato, and onion. The works.”

“Oh! Just mustard, please.”

Willa Jean nodded and hollered the order to the cook as she went toward the kitchen. “Walkin’ in! A Co’Cola and a Noah’s boy on bread with Mississippi mud.”

Tess smiled and looked around the diner. The front counter was lined with cake plates full of pies covered in meringue piled six inches high, cakes three and four layers tall, and two-inch thick brownies. Six chrome stools with red leather seats sat under the counter. The walls were packed with framed snapshots from as far back as the fifties. From the looks of it, they started taking pictures when poodle skirts were popular and never stopped. They were running out of wall space. The top half of the big picture window was covered with a “Henry Clay Price For Governor” banner. Tess spotted similar signs throughout the restaurant, and she’d noticed the waitress was wearing a campaign button.

The diner was only half full with about twenty people at various tables and booths. A few tables away, a mother was having trouble with her child. Tess heard the mother say, “I’m fixing to show you what a whooping is all about!”

When the little boy whined some more the mother added, “I mean it son, right now, I’d just as soon whoop you as hug you.” She looked up to see Tess watching them and said, “I’ll swan—raising kids is like being pecked to death by a chicken.”

Tess laughed. “I know what you mean. But you just wait. In ten years time, you’ll be wishing he were five again. The time goes by so fast.”

"How many you got?”

"Just one. My son's twenty-five now, but it doesn't seem possible."

"You married?” the woman asked boldly.

"Divorced," Tess answered.

“Here’s your Co’cola, hon,” Willa Jean said. “It’ll be just a minute more on the sandwich. You visiting or are you new in town?” She propped a hand on her waist.

“Brand new as of a week ago. I've been unpacking boxes for days. I guess you could say this is my debut in Goose Pimple Junction.”

“Well, all Southern Belles have to have a debut. And we're mighty glad to have you, sugar. Lessee . . . did you buy the old Hobb house on Walnut?”

“My house is on Walnut, but I believe the previous owner’s name was York.”

“Yep, that’s the one I’m thinking of. Houses ‘roundcheer are known for the families that lived in them the longest. Them Hobbs had the house for over seventy years, up until old Maye Hobb Carter died a few years back. It was her late husband's family home and then hers, even when she remarried. She was a sweet old soul, bless her heart. We all hated to lose her, but it was her time. She had a hard life, and I reckon she was ready to meet her maker. Her daughter still lives in town, but she and an older sister are all that’s left of the Hobbs ‘round here. Mmm-mmm—the things that family went through.”

“Willa!” the cook behind the counter yelled. “Order up!”

“Hold your pants on, Slick,” she yelled and then turned to Tess. “Be right back.” Willa hurried off to get the order and came bustling back with Tess’s sandwich. “It was nice talking with you, hon. I’ll leave you to eat in peace. Holler if you need anything else.”

A few minutes later the door to the diner opened, and almost every head turned to see who came in. Tess noticed everybody, except for her, raised a hand up in greeting, and a few said, “Hidee, Jackson.” The man’s eyes caught Tess’s and held them a little longer than normal. He sat down at the counter with his back to her and ordered iced tea. Willa waited on him, and Tess heard her say, “You don’t need ta be any sweeter than ya already are, Jackson. I’ma give you unsweetened tea.” She leaned across the counter looking up at him adoringly.

“Don’t you dare, Willa Jean or I will take my bidness elsewhere!” he said with a big smile.

Big flirt, Tess thought.

He was a good-looking man who looked to be in his early to mid-fifties, Tess guessed, but she wasn’t in the market. Being newly divorced, the last thing she needed was to get involved with another man.

As far as I'm concerned, they're all Martians and are to be avoided at all cost. Men Are From Mars, And Women Are From Venus wasn’t a best seller for nothing, she thought.

The door to the diner opened and a middle-aged man of medium height, dressed in a conservative suit and tie stuck his head in. “Vote for Henry Clay Price for governor, folks,” he said, with a wide politician’s smile.

Other than the smile, Henry Clay didn’t look like a politician. He had thinning auburn hair that was almost brown, and he wore round wire-rimmed eyeglasses on a round face. He reminded Tess a little of an absentminded professor.

“You gonna let out all the bought air?” Slick grumped, and Henry Clay waved and closed the door, then ambled on down the sidewalk.

Tess finished eating and walked to the counter to pay her bill. Willa gave her change and said, “Nice meeting you, hon. Don’t be a stranger, now!”

As she closed the door she heard one of the men at the counter tell the other, “You're so slow, it would take you two hours to watch 60 minutes!”

“I love this town," she whispered to herself.

Heroes & Hooligans in Goose Pimple Junction

Chapter 1

Marry in haste, repent in leisure. ~Southern Proverb

Lenny drove to his neighborhood bar with the windows wide open and Johnny Cash blaring on the radio, but he was oblivious to both. He was thinking about the phone conversation he’d just had with his ten-year-old daughter Carrie. It made him crazy the way her mother’s family called her “Butterbean.” What kind of a name was that for a child? But today he was crazy for a whole new reason. Jealousy and anger tore through him faster than small-town gossip. His daughter had spilled everything, and just when he thought he’d finally gotten a break, she said, “Mama kinda had a boyfriend but not anymore.” And: “Mama was kidnapped, but she’s back now.”

He pulled into the parking lot of the bar thinking, Boyfriend? We literally aren’t even divorced yet and she had a boyfriend? He pounded his fist against the steering wheel. He knew she’d been cheating on him. And now she’d done it right in front of their daughter. No doubt about it, he was going to have to do something about this Martha Maye situation.

Pulling into a primo spot at the front door, he looked up at the old rusty sign that had been over the entrance for years: Teetotalers ain’t welcome here. He winced at the loud screech announcing his car door opening, followed by the same screech when he slammed it shut. He glanced around the parking lot and saw the same cars that were there every night. His feet crunched on the gravel as he walked, and he remembered waking up three months earlier and slowly realizing his wife and daughter weren’t there.

The familiar bacon and coffee smells were gone. Cartoons weren’t blaring on the TV. His wife’s clothes were missing, along with his daughter’s, her teddy bear, and her dolls. The bookshelves were dotted with bare spots where Martha Maye’s favorite knickknacks and paddywhacks had been. And then he saw the note on the kitchen table that said she was divorcing him and that he shouldn’t try to find them. The realization that she’d left him in the middle of the night and taken their daughter seared through him like a red-hot poker.

Pretty stealthy for a woman who could literally be outwitted by a jar of marshmallow fluff. If she thinks she can literally run out on me and then humiliate me by going out with some scumbag before we’re even divorced, she has another think coming. I’ll show her. I’ll put on the charm and win her back.

Country music blasted as he opened the door, turned his head, and spit in disgust. She literally can’t be let her out by herself. Just look where it got her: kidnapped and almost killed.

His daughter had told him they’d been staying at his mother-in-law’s house. He should have figured. He’d always known Louetta to be a meddlesome old biddy. She lied to me when I called looking for my wife and daughter. She aided and abetted a woman leaving her husband. She allowed nefarious suitors to court my wife. Both of them must have literally stopped to think and forgotten how to start again.

And then there was his no-account, good-for-nothing brother who, upon learning of the impending divorce, wanted to know if Lenny would mind if he dated Martha Maye. Boy, I’m gonna slap you so hard, when you quit rolling, your clothes’ll literally be outta style. My baby brother and my wife. Yeah. Over my dead body. How could he even ask such a thing? Both of them were nothing but a bunch of backstabbing traitors.

He hitched up his jeans under his overflowing beer belly, swaggered into the bar, and ordered a Colt 45. The jukebox was playing, “I Want a Beer as Cold as My Ex-Wife’s Heart,” and he thought that was pretty darn perfect for his life at the moment.

Looking around the room, he spotted a hot blonde giving him the eye. He sucked in his gut—a move that didn’t yield the desired result—and looked back, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. She brazenly smiled back at him.

How dare Martha Maye leave me? I can literally get any woman I want. And two on Saturday.

A football star in high school, homecoming king, and voted best looking his senior year, Lenny was used to women coming onto him, not leaving him. He put the bottle to his lips and downed half of it.

That woman was literally lucky to have me. Sure, I’ve put on a little weight, but only in the gut. I practically have to fight women off with a stick. Looking around the room again, he saw female eyes on him from several tables in the room. Yessirree, I still got it.

Lenny started to lift his bottle to his mouth again but halted midway when two men sat down heavily on barstools on either side of him; they looked capable of eating their young. Both men were muscular and tough. One was as tall as a telephone pole. One was as short as a gnat’s tail. The taller man had black eyes under bushy eyebrows, and the other man wore aviator sunglasses on a flat, wide nose. He pushed the glasses to the top of his head to give Lenny his best glare.

“We’ve been looking all over Hell and half of Georgia for you, boy.” Eyebrows scooted his stool in close, crowding Lenny.

“Shoot.” Lenny’s hand automatically moved to his ankle holster, checking for his knife. “That don’t surprise me none. You literally couldn’t find oil with a dipstick.”

“Solly says he’s had about enough of you,” Eyebrows said.

“Yeah,” Mr. Gnat joined in, “he’s had about enough of you.”

Lenny snorted. “You can tell Solly to blow it out his butt,” Lenny said boldly, more boldly than he felt. He shelled a peanut, popped it in his mouth, and threw the shell into Mr. Gnat’s face.

“Solly says not to let you off the hook this time.”

“Yeah, not to let you off the hook.” Mr. Gnat’s left eye twitched.

“What’s with Mr. Echo over here?” Lenny pointed his thumb at the short man.

The telephone pole ignored him and said, “Solly says you’ve screwed him over for the last time.”

“Yeah, the last time.”

“I didn’t screw him over the first time.” Lenny drained his bottle. He felt like his mouth was full of cotton. “Solly wouldn’t tell the truth to save his life from dying.” Lenny tried to stand up, but the men had him penned in.

“You can’t talk about Solly that way.”

“Yeah, not that way,” Mr. Gnat echoed.

Eyebrows looked behind Lenny to his friend. “This boy has the mental agility of a soap dish, Joey.”

“Yeah, a soap dish.”

Lenny leaned in real close to Joey, who said, “Whatta you think you’re doing?”

“Just wondered if I got close enough if I could literally hear the ocean.”

“Boy, what you need is an education,” Eyebrows said.

“Yeah, an edj-ee-cation.” Gnat strung the word out.

The men grabbed Lenny’s arms, lifting him off his stool. The song on the jukebox had ended, and Lenny heard the crunch of peanut shells as the men propelled him toward the door.

“Boys, y’all best not be messing with me,” Lenny snapped, trying to break free.

“That’s mighty big talk for a punk like you.” They stepped aside as someone came through the door, and then they threw Lenny through it. He landed on the ground but sprang right back to his feet, his dukes up, ready to fight.

Eyebrows was fast. He knocked Lenny to the ground again with a left hook. Joey followed up with two kicks to the ribs.

Lenny pulled himself into a ball, both to protect himself from further harm and to have better access to his ankle holster. But Joey saw the knife and kicked it away as Lenny drew it from his pants leg.

The men both grabbed Lenny by an arm again, pulling him upright, and Eyebrows punched him in the gut, causing him to double over. They double-teamed him and left him on the ground bloody and beaten, as cars whizzed past on the road in front of the bar.

Right before Lenny passed out, he thought: Tomorrow I’ll pack up and head for Goose Pimple Junction to reclaim what’s rightfully mine. I’ll literally be a devoted husband and father and get my family back. I ain’t gonna let that woman leave me. Nobody leaves Lenny Applewhite.

Short & Tall Tales in Goose Pimple Junction

Talk of the Town

He may be good-looking, but good-looking won't put food on the table. ~Willa Jean Coomer

Downtown Goose Pimple Junction was bustling the next morning when Johnny parked his car and walked a block to the diner. The yellow tickets that were stuck under windshield wipers on some of the cars vaguely registered with him because Ima Jean’s abduction was on his mind, and he didn’t have room to think of much else. Periodically, he thought about Martha Maye and how pretty she looked when she’d brought him fried chicken, home fries, macaroni salad, and a slice of apple pie. But he forced his mind back to Ima Jean and how he was going to go about finding her.

The diner was crowded but went deadly silent when he walked in. Everyone stopped talking, and all heads turned his way. He met a few people’s eyes, nodded a hello, mumbled “Morning,” and sat down at the counter next to a man who looked older than Moses.

“You’re mighty brave to bring yourself in here today, Chief. I myself don’t hold no ill will, but then again, I ain’t got a car, so it’s no skin off my nose.”

“Come again—” Johnny started to say, but Willa Jean interrupted him.

“What can I getcha, Chief?” She put an emphasis on “Chief” but the word was dripping with disdain.

Johnny wondered if it was his imagination or was she glaring at him? He put a hand to the back of his neck as he craned his head around, finding several other people giving him the same expression. Curious.

“Coffee, a fried egg, and cheese grits, please.” He flashed her his best grin, but she didn’t seem to notice.

She turned on her heel without another word, calling to Slick, “A deadeye and mystery in the alley, Slick.”

Johnny noticed the old man cackling to himself and wondered what was so funny. He seemed to be a regular. Surely he was used to diner lingo. Moses turned to the man next to him and mumbled something that sounded like, “I haven't had this much fun since the pigs ate my brother.”

Willa Jean came back with a cup and saucer and a pot of coffee. As she poured the brown liquid into the cup, a good amount spilled into the saucer. She looked up at Johnny and deadpanned, “Oops,” but she walked away, making no attempt to clean it up.

Conversation had started again in the diner, but it was in hushed tones, not the loud chatter that Johnny had heard when he first came in. Once again, he looked around the restaurant and noticed furtive glances coming at him. A few words and bits of sentences wafted his way: “a lot of gall, arrogant, outsider, amateur, dumb as a fencepost . . . ” He considered asking the gentleman next to him if this was normal townsfolk behavior, but Willa Jean came back and set a plate in front of him. His gaze went from the plate to her eyes, which seemed to hold a challenge.

“Um . . . ma’am . . . this looks right tasty, but it also looks like poached eggs and hash.”

Willa put all her weight on her right leg and propped her hand on her hip. “Least your eyes work.”

“Well, see . . . I could be mistaken, but I thought I ordered fried eggs and grits.”

“You’re mistaken.” She flung a towel over her shoulder and walked away.

“Oooh, law,” the man drawled. “That was almost as ugly as Uncle Moody’s divorce.” He swiveled off his stool, saying, “’Scuse me. I have to see a man about a horse,” and he made his way to the restrooms.

Rogues & Rascals in Goose Pimple Junction

Chapter 1A Unicorn And A Hit Woman

Mama always said . . . most people deserve each other.

Early June, Atlanta, Georgia

Sipping sweet tea and browsing Facebook on her iPhone, Wynona Baxter sat with her partner, Zeke, at a table outside a coffee shop. With her toned and tanned bare legs crossed, her left foot—clad in Jimmy Choo black four-inch-heeled sandals—bobbed up and down to a silent beat known only to her.

“Here he comes.” Zeke adjusted his sunglasses and inclined his head toward the street.

There he was—their mark—right on time, wearing his JC Penny ugly tan blazer and brown polyester pants set right underneath his paunch. He ran a hand through his thinning red hair, but demonstrating the man’s definite need for a haircut, a long patch in the front dropped right back down over his right eye.

Wynona muttered, “Get a haircut.” Then to her partner, she said, “His confidence has to be ill-gotten."

Zeke harrumphed. “Just like everything he has in life.”

Over the rim of her glass of sweet tea, she casually watched as he crossed the street, speaking to a few people along the way. His gut preceded the rest of him by a good ten inches. Why on earth a man with no outwardly redeeming qualities—and from what she’d heard inwardly too—could strut like a rooster was beyond her.

Wynona put her glass down and ran her finger along the condensation. “I’ll tell you one thing. It’s obvious from the way he carries himself that there isn’t any conceit in his family: he got it all."

Zeke sat back and propped a leg over a knee. “Yeah, but brains are another question.”

“You reckon he has any of those?” Wynona’s foot continued to bob up and down.

The duo had been watching him, and after a week, they knew his routine. Wynona looked at her iPhone. “He’s right on time and headed for the Dizzy Duck as usual.”

Zeke nodded. “If he hadn’t made someone very angry, this wouldn’t have to be his last visit there.”

“Okay. So he’ll spend thirty to forty minutes in the bar and then head for home.” Wynona put the phone in her purse.Zeke stood. “Where we’ll be waiting for him.”

She took one more gulp of tea, shook the ice in the glass, and set it down hard on the table, shooting a look that would put frost on a snowman to the guy a few tables away who’d been leering at her for the better part of an hour. Leisurely standing, she smoothed the front of her short linen skirt. As she left the coffee shop, she was aware of the eyes on her . . . well, she could only guess which body part his eyes were on. Wynona preferred to be unobtrusive, but that was nearly impossible with her looks. But no matter, by tomorrow she’d appear totally different anyway. She thought she might enjoy being a redhead next.

The hot Atlanta sun beat down on them as Wynona and Zeke walked across the street in the opposite direction from the person they’d tailed for almost a week: Mr. Sleazy, as she’d come to think of him. They had been sitting at the outdoor table for over an hour waiting for their mark to leave his office building. Feeling like she was melting, bored half out of her skull, and glad to be on the move again, she got into their rented Lexus ES300 and turned the ignition key. She set the air conditioning to full blast and leaned her head against the headrest. The cool air blew across her face, which glowed with perspiration.

She glanced at the dashboard and groaned. “Is it really 104 degrees out there?”

Zeke adjusted the vents. “Considering the humidity is at least in the eighty percent range, it feels more like 150.”

Taking a lace hankie from her purse on the passenger seat, she blotted her face so as not to ruin her makeup. She fluffed the bangs of her brown wig and slipped on her oversized sunglasses before adjusting the air conditioning vents to point straight at her. After putting the car into drive, she eased out onto the road and secretly offered Mr. Googly Eyes an unladylike hand signal.

Wynona maneuvered the Lexus down the curvy shade-dappled country lane while singing along to Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places” on the radio. She pulled off to the side of the road, stopping just in front of a black mailbox with white lettering that spelled “Reid.” The box stood to the right of a long driveway leading to a large colonial two-story house. This wasn’t Mr. Sleazy’s house but one just down the road from his ticky-tacky run-of-the-mill ranch house. After a few minutes, she was impatient. “Come on, you know this road has hardly any traffic. We’ve only seen a handful of cars in the six days we’ve been tailing Polyster Man."

Zeke cracked the car door, waited, and listened. The only sound was the rat-a-tat of a woodpecker. Convinced no cars were near, he hurried to the rear of the car, as she popped the trunk. He pulled out a duffle bag and slid back into the car, laying the bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

“Now watch, Wynona. You might need to know how to do this some day. Pay attention.” Reaching under the clothing inside the bag, he pulled out the pieces of a Glock .40 caliber semi-automatic. Grabbing the slide, he took the barrel and slid it in, put in the guide rod and spring, keeping his thumb over it. With the weapon in his other hand, he said, “Make sure there are no obstructions, match the male/female grooves, slide it on, lock it to the rear, and put down the takedown lever at three o’clock.” He quickly snapped the pieces into place and screwed the silencer on.

Wynona recoiled a little when he opened his bag of tricks, as he liked to call his knife set. Her mind went over the different ways she’d seen him use each one in the past. A slow and torturous death was his specialty and why people asked for him.

Wynona glanced at the time on the dashboard. “I reckon we’ve spent five minutes cooling off after leaving the coffee shop and fifteen driving here. It should also take Sleazy fifteen minutes to get here—after his usual thirty minutes in the bar.” Wy reached in the bag, pulled out a CD, and popped it into the player. “If I Had Shot You When I Wanted To, I’d Be Out By Now” came over the speakers, and she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she sang along.

Zeke watched and said, “I love a girl with a sense of humor in this line of work.”

Twenty-five minutes later, she turned off the engine. They got out of the car, and he raised the hood. Zeke crouched in front of the car, while she leaned against the Lexus to wait.

She heard it before she saw it. “Showtime,” Wynona said.

“Do your stuff, Wy.” Zeke shifted slightly in the gravel.

She leaned in under the hood from the side of the Lexus that faced the oncoming car so that her long thoroughbred legs would have a chance to work their full magic. She heard the pop of gravel and an engine slowing as he eased his car to the side of the road.“What’s the problem?” Mr. Sleazy asked as he approached her.

Holding the gun in his right hand, Zeke rose to his full height, walked past her, and pointed the weapon at Sleazy.

“Honey, you’re the problem.“ Wynona cocked her head. “But we’ve got the solution.” She noticed his Adam’s apple bob up and down; hers did too.

Walking toward him with the gun aimed at his chest, Zeke said, “You’ve made someone awfully mad with your low quantity of moral fiber. You pretended to be someone you’re not. You took advantage of people. You stole money from them. They said to make it a . . .” he stretched out his words, “. . . slow, painful end to your time here on earth.”